What is "ANSI as UTF-8" and how can I make fputcsv() generate UTF-8 w/BOM?

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I made a PHP script that generates CSV files that were previously generated by another process. And then, the CSV files have to be imported by yet another process.

The import of the old CSV files works fine, but but when importing the new CSV files there are issues with special characters.

When I open old CSVs with Notepad++, it says the encoding is UTF-8, and when I open the new CSVs with it, it says their encoding is 'ANSI as UTF-8'.

What's the difference of the two?

And how can I make fopen and fputcsv use the 'pure?' UTF-8 encoding?

Thanks!

utf-8 character-encoding notepad++ php
4 Answers

It is worth noting that ANSI as UTF-8, i.e. UTF-8 without the BOM is useful if you are formatting your PHP files as UTF-8. If your PHP file is outputting html to the browser then the BOM is included in the HTML output which the w3c validator explicitly warns against:

Byte-Order Mark found in UTF-8 File.

The Unicode Byte-Order Mark (BOM) in UTF-8 encoded files is known to cause problems for some text editors and older browsers. You may want to consider avoiding its use until it is better supported.

Further to this, I spotted that the BOM confuses Firefox's Firebug which now thinks that all your <head> content is actually in the <body> tag.

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